As per my last post, I’m still appealing for help in tracing living relatives of Flt Lt Donald Banbury Douglas, a young Canadian airman who died in a plane crash while on a test flight in Banffshire, Scotland in 1945. Craig Anderson is planning to erect a memorial to Donald and the Scottish leading aircraftman who was also in the plane, G P Robbins, and would like to make contact with their relatives. Having found a collection of documents and photos relating to Donald on the Veterans Affairs Canada website, I emailed them to ask permission to post a picture of him.

I then received several emails and documents from the archivist at the High School that Donald attended in Toronto. Forty young men from the same school died in WWII and the school commemorates them in a Memorial Book. (Photo reproduced from the Memorial Book of Lawrence Park Collegiate in Toronto, Ontario with kind permission of R Whitehouse). Capt Whitehouse was able to tell me that Donald was the only son in the family, and Craig had information to say that Donald’s mum, Lela Douglas, maiden surname Banbury, was part of the Knowles family from Aurora, Ontario. I wonder if Donald had any sisters?

I appealed to the genealogy blogging community and my Facebook and Twitter followers to spread the word about this appeal (thanks, guys, please keep going!) and a comment was posted by Lorraine on Part 1, pointing me in the direction of Canada 411, a directory site. It shows that there are 5 Knowles families in Aurora, and a LOT of Douglas families in Edmonton, so it will be more efficient to contact the Knowles families first.

Adrian left a comment saying “there is only six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet so if lots of people share this request on their Facebook page, the relatives will be found”.

Thank you, and please share using your preferred method of social media – there’s a nice selection of buttons below!

Jo

On the Veterans Affairs Canada website, you can view documents about the accident and very moving correspondence to and from Donald’s father, Walter Douglas. These documents can be accessed in person – File RG24 (War Dead) Volume 27404, in Ottawa, Canada, with the exception of the photo above.